A Banana For Your Monkey Mind
It’s 3AM and your mind is racing a hundred miles an hour. No sleep for you. Your monkey mind won’t shut up. It can’t be controlled. It can’t be killed. You give up even trying and just lie back in despair, exhausted but unable to sleep. Sound familiar?
The Bad News:
- The Monkey Mind can not be killed.
- The Monkey Mind can not be controlled.
The Good News:
- It can be distracted
- Distracting the monkey mind doesn’t require incense and essential oils.
While the monkey mind can’t be killed or controlled it is possible to distract it. How do you distract a monkey? My preferred method is with a banana. So I’m going to share with you a technique for creating a banana to hand off to your monkey mind.
The banana?
Breathe
But not just any breathing. I’m going to show you a specific breathing technique to generate that banana. At first you may only be able to distract the monkey mind for just a few minutes, but over time you can distract it for longer and longer periods of time.
So what’s the technique?
The technique is called Ujjayi Breath. Pronounced You-jai-ah, it is a technique used by Yogis and Taoists in their meditations. But here’s the key.. you don’t have to actually be meditating for this technique to work! So when your monkey mind is in overdrive during a release planning meeting you can generate with a banana to distract it without having to get in the lotus posture.
How does it work?
For the 2 minute training version I'm going to ask you to channel your inner Darth Vader. Eyes open. Sit up straight. Mouth shut.We're going to be breathing in and out through our nose only. You'll want to try to actually make a noise while we're practicing here, but once you've got the technique down you can do it so quietly that no one around you will notice. Breathe Out
Try to make that Darth Vader sound in your throat, not in your nasal cavity. Think about how you'd fog up a mirror with your mouth open and emulate that same tension in your throat as you exhale through your nose. Breathe In
Ok, this is a little harder. Again focus on trying to constrict the throat to make the Vader breath sound instead of making the sound in your nose/head. Your throat muscles might feel funny, it's ok you'll improve the more you practice. Repeat 5 times. Vader Out..... Vader In.Now repeat 5 more times but close your eyes and focus on the throat just below your voice box. Vader Out.... Vader In.
That’s the breath, so how do we turn that into a banana? When you’re sitting in your next meeting and you sense your mind is beginning to wander shift your focus and begin a series of Ujjayi breaths. Unless you’re muted on a conference call you’re going to want not breathe too loudly.
Concentrate on the first 5 breaths. Now hand the breathing focus to your monkey mind and slowly shift your attention back to the speakers in your meeting. If the monkey mind throws down the banana patiently pick it back up, breathe a couple of times and gently hand it back. Over time the monkey mind will get better and better at playing with it’s new toy and you’ll find you’re able to shift your primary focus back to the topic at hand.
It’s been my experience that the monkey mind is an especially big problem for people who are creative problem solvers. Their mind seems to be especially good at processing information from lots of different inputs and distilling it into brilliant insights. The problem? They can’t find the off switch.
So it’s 3AM and the monkey mind is working overtime. Use the same Ujjayi breathing technique and hand your breath to the monkey mind. Only this time focus along with the monkey. You are partners…. together… just breathing… in and out… in and out. Over time your technique here will improve and you’ll be able to shut off the 100mph freight train of your thoughts allowing your body to relax and sleep to come.
More resources:
Learn Ujjayi Breath
Uncover the Mystery of Ujjayi Breath
